43 comments:

Beware anyone on the so called TIF plan that was recently let go. Our state has a waiting week before getting benefits. The state then goes by "benefit years". When I was let go in January, I had a waiting week which the TIF paid in full. The benefit year was up at the end of February, so another waiting week was mandatory at the beginning of March. I called to obtain full payment my second waiting week as was told by Gannett HR, but the company oontracted to pay the TIF states they will only pay 1 waiting week. Just wanted to give a heads up that when you are let go, you may not necessarily get the equivalent of full wages as stated by your HR director.

Definitely! The experience I had with my HR should have been a sit-com. Still, I didn't hold its suddenly one-person staff (down from four) at fault for having incorrect information: that hapless individual, essentially previously just a secretary, was left high and dry, sink or swim, no tools with which to do the job, typical of Gannett "culture."

So I went to my financial adviser to roll over my Retirement and 401K - he calls the number at Gannett Benefits - guess what - outsourced, a foreigner answers the phone to take care of the business - It's the Gannett Way!!!

He's a dick and has completely destroyed what used to be a decent circulation department. He outsourced USA Today delivery in Lexington, let go one of the best managers in Gannett, and it's been a nightmare since. Went to Lexington last week to watch the Cardinals play at Rupp, the USA Today boxes were full of graffiti and were completely unserviced. It's a complete embarrassment to Gannett to have people from all over the country visit a city to see empty boxes with graffiti on them. This would have never happened if the Lexington manager was not let go. If people like Tony Simmons is the future of Gannett, it's way past time to get out.

He destroyed just about everyplace he went. The Journal News in White Plains, NY is a shell of itself.What makes everyone laugh is Tony's title was VP of Operations--every element of Operations no longer exists--no printing, no transportation--no home delivery.

The fact that this man is still employed by Gannett means the corporate side has absolutely no clue.

Hey to The Nashville Tennessean , I have to ask, How does a Guy that been in IT for 30 years NOW is moved yet again and is The Phone Guy, Makes well over 65K a year, cant keep a Supervisors job,keeps getting moved, and still cant keep the phones working get to stay? Cant anyone in Corporate see the savings by letting this putz go and getting a trained person? or a Contractor?

I believe, that I know who you are referring to, and in all honesty, he wasn't moved again, as you put it.This genius move was done about a year ago, but didn't take effect in Nashville until just very recently, and the IT guy had nothing to do with it. This was part of the South Group IT consolidation which officially started in September (I think), but was in the works about 4 months prior to that. This came on the tail end of the early retirement offers, where more IT people than expected accepted the package. Keeping with what is legal, those positions left vacated, could have been filled with brand new employee's, but a brain storm at the corporate level decided, that there were enough IT people not being utilized at the company standard of 125%, so they could fill in at other sites and help cover the staff shortage.In theory this is a good idea, but in real life not so much. Everybody in South Group IT got new jobs, new responsibilities, based on experience and capabilities. Some IT techs has never seen their new manager, since they can be located in Tennessee and the manager in Florida, and so goes it for all here in the South Group. Some managers got demoted, and none got promoted, and it was a question of having X amount of manager positions vs. 2X current managers.No pay raises were given to those who retained their position, and all kept their current salary in their new positions.BTW, this has, as I wrote above, been in the works for almost a year, and this is the first time you hear about it? Actually I am not surprised. I have on many occasions forwarded the official letter sent out to all, where it stated how to use the new ticket system for reporting issues with computers and phones. Most people just glanced at it and deleted the email.

That's all a very nice story, and Thank you for your insight on the new IT in South Group, BUT the Point I was making is WHY is there such incompetent people in areas were they have NO skills.. Or maybe minimal.. so even though you say you know this Man at The Tennessean that's great, I was asking Why are these people that sit back for 30 years, Never move up in the order, get moved around from job to job and still make a paycheck.. I know allot better people then him in his area left.. HE should have left with his last Manager and supervisor when they found better jobs..But NO its much easier to Milk your company till retirement..

We’re making two big changes today, which will present huge new opportunities for our news designers and online editors and speed our pace in the digital news cycle.

Starting today, we’re putting the cover story in the newspaper on hiatus. We’re opening up the section fronts to the designers to use graphics, photos, breakouts and more stories as they see fit to liven up the pages and focus on our most interesting stories each day. While story jumps will still be allowed, we want to keep them to a bare minimum, if at all. The best section fronts, including the front page, will have strong refers to great enterprise journalism, analysis, and personalities inside, as well as on the outside.

We’re abandoning the practice of holding stories for certain programming times on the web, especially front page stories from the night before. This will give our online editors more freedom to experiment with different layouts as they see fit, resulting in livelier section pages online. The introduction of Visual Revenue this week across the editing desks online will help us in this experiment.

Oh those pesky ex marketing folks are at it again. And it appears from the earlier post there are now more of them to deal with. Let's have Jim give them their own useless blog for their stupid posts so we can get on with the real smart, progressive moves being made every day at Gannett.

It is called cutting staff in a nice way, how about fire all the Publishers? What the hell do they do anyway? Can I get an answer to this, were I work, The Pub over see's editorial and advertising. Then why do we need Pubs and Directors?

If the Appleton witch is gone that is good. The two times I asked her a question she was wrong and I had to call corporate the get the right answer.With two publishers gone in the past two weeks, you wonder what is happening here now. Are Gina and Dan just going to run it all themselves? The Gannett way to leave two incompetents in charge.

You editorial types should remember who brings in the revenue that pays your worthless salaries.The sales and marketing people,that's who.And when they have a worthless product to sell, it is no wonder that the sales revenues keep going,down, and down and down.The revenue spiral continues down and the layoffs keep happening.

Bears repeating, and 7:31 verifies it: This is a company that loathes the people who create its product, nor does it care about the quality of the product it creates or the customers who consume it. That's not a great business model.

Why do I hate editors who say cheers. Or use initials instead of their first names. Do folks have other grating insincere and blowhard signoffs that drive them crazy. Like Tina Brown signing off by saying ... best. I would rather have something more honest like ... I hate writing these memos to you minions.

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."